Thanks again, Deborah, for adding your thoughts to this discussion.

In the second scenario, it's hard to fault the leadership since it does appear that they are trying to address the situation. However, we do have to make sure that a sufficient amount of time has been alloted to allow the change to take hold. One can't simply expect employees to suddenly appear to be motivated just because you're trying to create an engaged workplace; there has to be a reasonable amount of time allowed to let employees appreciate this is a serious effort and not the latest pet project from the organization's leadership.

But if there has been a sufficient amount of time and there still appears to be no tangible improvement, the situation can be addressed by simply talking with your employees to understand how they see things. Sometimes the efforts that we perceive to be significant can be rather unremarkable to our employees. We have to remember that to create a motivated environment takes the involvement of all parties, both those in leadership positions and those in the front lines, if we are going to see the changes we all want to see taking hold in today's workplace.

Thanks again, Scott, for your comment and questions. I hope my reply helps to shed some light on what I think might be behind those situations.

People are NOT engaged in their organizations (only 1 in 5, globally) and leaders aren't leading – only 1 in 10 respondents to a survey agreed that senior leaders in their companies actually treat employees as vital corporate assets.

Yeah, we can put the "opportunity for improvement" spin on it and look at it as potential organizational capital. On the other hand, it's been going along like this for what seems to be forever…

And it seems that technology is just making people MORE isolated from each other, not more connected.

How does anything get done these days? And will anything improve?

(been consulting and training and all that for over 30 years now)

You bring up an excellent point of Covey’s that demonstrates a key point that we tend to forget these days – just because a particular task is viewed as being urgent doesn’t mean that it’s also important in the overall scheme of our reaching our target or long-term objectives. By drawing that clear distinction, we stand a better chance of allocating our limited resources to those items that will have an impact on our progress and not simply reacting to those that draw the most attention.

Thanks, Mary Jo, for contributing your thoughts to this discussion.

Although I may date myself in this, but I still find Covey’s time management matrix – with the four quadrants – and his wise advice to focus on the important, but not urgent Quadrant II activities to be relevant and helpful. Maybe even more so today with the preponderance of technical “alerts” and gadgets that catch our attention and distract us away from the important.

@John – Thanks John; glad you enjoyed this piece. I definitely believe that making time to ask and review the answers these questions provide will save organizations and individuals time and resources by making sure both are being allocated to the tasks that would best serve the goals you’ve set out for your company or yourself.

Thanks again Richard and John for adding your thoughts to this discussion.